Monday, 30 November 2015

This is a letter I sent to 'The Herald' today following an article by their columnist David Torrance on the prospect of UK air strikes on ISIL in Syria

David Torrance is correct to highlight the glaring flaws in David Cameron's case for UK air strikes in Syria ‘ …the intellectual side of the balance sheet seems to me insubstantial’ in today's Herald [‘Corbyn’s style may be inept, but his argument is correct’ 30/11/15].

The Prime Minister’s plea that ‘we need to do something’ after the Paris massacre is not god enough. In fact it is no better than the case Parliament rejected two years ago. On that occasion David Cameron insisted we should bomb the Assad Government after it used chemical weapons against civilians in the escalating civil war. Had MPs taken his advice ISIL would be sitting in Damascus today running the country and the political consequences of that don’t bear thinking about.

The British Governments claim that ‘there are 70,000 moderate fighters in the Free Syrian Army’ ready and waiting to play the crucial role of ‘ground forces’ in the war against ISIL is nonsense. It ranks alongside Tony Blair’s ‘dodgy dossier’ which insisted Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003. Robert Fisk, the widely respected Middle East correspondent, ridicules Cameron's suggestion and insists the FSA is lucky if it has 100 ‘moderate Sunni soldiers’ and points out that this largely fictional ‘army’ is referred to only by Western leaders who refuse to recognise that the only forces [beyond the Kurds in their northern enclaves] capable of defeating ISIL are the Syrian Army of Bashir al-Asaad backed as he is by the Russians, Iran and Hezbollah.

David Cameron’s proposition to launch immediate UK air strikes on ISIL also undermines his oft repeated and equally reprehensible objective which is oust Assad and organise a complete ‘regime change’ in Syria. There is a brutal civil war taking place in Syria where the only force capable of defeating ISIL is the Syrian army.

Wednesday, 25 November 2015

Two features of George Osborne's Autumn Statement today overshadow all others. The 'headline grabber' will inevitably be his unexpected climb down over tax credits. Just as important however are the figures revealing the reduction in state spending during his period in office. It now accounts for just 35% of the total UK economy. It was 50% when he became Chancellor in 2010.

Faced with widespread opposition over his proposal to cut £4.4 billion from the benefits paid to top up the wages of low paid workers, including criticism from scores of his own backbenchers, this aspirant Prime Minister abandoned his plan altogether. His decision says more about his own political ambitions however than any change of heart by the Tories. They still intend to slash £12 billion from other welfare provisions most noticeably Universal Credits and housing benefit. They will also proceed as planned with £20 billion of cuts to transport services, climate change provisions and justice budgets.

Over the last 5 years the Tories have systematically slashed UK state spending. They are committed as George Osborne again made clear today 'to a high wage [sic], low tax and low state spending economy'. This means passing more and more responsibility for providing social services will be passed to the private sector. And more of the real wage bill will be passed on to private employers and not the state.

So how can Osborne reconcile his u-turn on tax credits with his commitment to lowering the national debt? The Office of Budget Responsibility can provide some of the answer. He has benefited from low interest rates for paying back government debt says the OBR and higher than expected tax returns in the year ahead. But the OBR has also concluded that his borrowing will go up not down from now until 2020. So Osborne's decisions today were as much about his own political ambitions as economic 'prudence'